Health Agencies’ COVID Work To Persist in Event of Shutdown

Stacy Cline Amin spoke to Bloomberg Law about the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) plans to continue working to combat the COVID-19 pandemic in the event of a government shutdown.

According to Stacy, agencies with public safety functions, like the FDA, must evaluate each activity they conduct to determine if it has a source of funding or falls into an exception for “emergency circumstances” that would allow it to continue that work during a shutdown.

Although there is a public health emergency declaration for the pandemic, it doesn’t mean the “emergency circumstances” exception during a shutdown applies to all public health work, Stacy added. Agencies must evaluate each nonfunded activity to determine if stopping it would “imminently threaten human life or the protection of property.”

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